Saturday, April 15, 2017

Three Doors

There's a really cool track on the VAST album (Visual Audio Sensory Theater) called "Three Doors". It has been circling my head a lot these last few days, as I really do feel like I'm trying to pick a direction.

WILD

If you've been following my blog for any length of time you know I've been working for many years on WILD, an RPG of Dreamsharing. Open, untethered, and born from my love of Inception, Dreamscape, Paprika and The Matrix. I've been working on it off and on while doing other projects and its always bubbling away at the back of my mind, like a constantly spinning top locked away in a safe, in a house, in the city of my subconscious.

But I keep suffering from doubt, and also hearing tales of how horrible our hobby can be. Ignorant, vocal men, mostly. Threatening creators, posting abuse online. I'm sick of it.

I tried to voice some positivity years ago by creating RPGaDAY, trying to get people talking about the positive aspects of gaming. But I'm so ashamed of the abuse and discrimination in my hobby.

WILD Fiction

The door next to working on WILD is to concentrate on the fiction. For a NaNoWriMo many moons ago I wrote the first book of a trilogy, set in the WILD universe. A teenage school-leaver finds herself trapped in a nightmare she cannot wake from, while her father tries to create what will eventually become the dreamshare technology of the game to try to guide her back to the waking world. It was bizarre, a little personal, and weird thinking as my lead character - an eighteen year old girl facing the pressures of leaving school, going to university, her strained relationships with her parents and the betrayals of her friends.

Once again, doubt has reared its ugly head. Can I write fiction? Would anyone want to read it? What's the point?

And behind door number 3?

Something else?

My desire to write the Harry Potter RPG has never subsided. I know it's a mostly fruitless exercise, but there's that part of me that knows it's a good thing. It could be great for kids and adults alike, getting kids using their imaginations rather than staring at a screen. But while things seem to be more likely now than ever before, with the Fantastic Beasts - Cases from the Wizarding World game on iOS, as well as the forthcoming Harry Potter miniatures game, I'm still just a dreamer. A lone writer with no financial backing or big company to put the money where my mouth is.

I know how it could work, how it wouldn't even really be an RPG, and part of me just wants to write a good chunk of it, and digitally print a couple of copies to really show off what I have in mind. Send copies to WB and JK Rowling. But even then, I'm just me.

Besides, I'm sure there are already others out there who are working on it.

--

So at the moment, I'm standing there, like the guy in the stock photo above. Looking at the doors.

I had a birthday recently, and there's a big one coming up next year. Part of me is just thinking "You're too old for this crap" and there's another part of me shouting "Get it done! Do something before the next birthday. You have a year. Get off your ass!"

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WHO IS AUTOCRATIK?

David F. Chapman - writer, game designer, editor, publisher and all-round control freak. Probably best known as game designer on the award winning Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game for Cubicle 7 Entertainment and creator of the Vortex system that powers it, and as line developer on Conspiracy X 2.0 for Eden Studios, and as creator of #RPGaDAY.